


The Stupendous Miss Sanders

by trasharama



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Coruscant as NYC, Dominant Kylo Ren, Eventual Smut, F/M, LGBTQ, M/M, Multi, New York City, Slightly slow burn, Smut, Stand Up Comedy, all the O's in the world, but i love the show, but only bc our poor rey has never had the big O with the help of a man, i am not good at writing stand up, im trying, is a character lol, marvelous mrs maisel, rey will be very satisfied, smutty mcsmutsmut, terrible stand up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 11:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trasharama/pseuds/trasharama
Summary: Rey Sanders pursues a career in stand-up comedy in 1950s Coruscant City after Poe Dameron leaves her at the altar. She's also horny for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo since he's hot and funny.A Marvelous Mrs Maisel AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry for this garbage  
> bear with me here  
> i love this show so much  
> i will not do this justice  
> ps can you tell this is unbeta'd? all (of the many, many) mistakes are woefully mine

She is just on the cusp of blackout drunk, of that, Rey Sanders is certain.

An entire bottle of manischewitz will certainly do that to a person.

The scene she’s filling, it’s a familiar one. A dusty stage with a bright light shining on it, creaky wooden floorboards supporting a piano, a microphone stand, and a little black stool. What is unfamiliar is her position in the bar: on said stage, with the bright light streaming so brightly on her face she squints, and the microphone in her two steady hands.

Is that her voice speaking?

She isn’t even sure at this point, but she’s pretty sure it is.

“So my life completely fell apart today,” she says, and the grating intensity of her accent is jarring to her, but she is too far gone to stop. “One second I’m engaged, the next I’m in a sopping white dress and--Jesus fuck, I’m in a sopping white dress!”

The news should be anything but amusing, in reality, though Rey has certainly never been one to shy away from an unamusing situation. She bursts out laughing after glancing down at her chest, the fabric clinging to her like a second skin, and just revealing signs of the pink corset underneath--

“Poe’s favorite color,” she offers as explanation, acknowledging the stunned crowd with a self deprecating grin.

“Who’s Poe?” a woman sitting in the front asks.

Rey taps a finger to her chin, places a hand on her hip, shifts her weight to her right leg entirely in mock thought. “Who’s Poe, you ask?”

The woman nods.

“Poe. My fiance-- _ex_ -fiance, that is. We were going to get _married_ today. Hence the--” She gestures all around her body at the gown pooling at her knees. “But who is Poe, really? A brilliant mind, for one, probably one of the most brilliant in the entire world. Graduate of Columbia, you know, law student and all. Who is Poe? A giant, raging prick who left me at the altar, of course. Not even my brilliant mouth could keep him here, I guess, and I’m not just talking about my wit.”

Rey interrupts herself, shoving her thumb into her cheek to emulate the kind of sloppy blowjobs she thought Poe loved receiving. Members of the audience either gasp or erupt into laughter. It quiets down when she brings the microphone back up.

“Who is Poe... Who is Poe… I’ll be honest, I’m not sure who Poe is anymore. I thought he was the love of my life, the man of my dreams, the one to take me from Queens to the Upper West Side in dazzling fashion--that’s what they’d call me, I'm sure, all of those old money monsters: The Dazzling Mrs Dameron, with a penthouse and a dog and maybe an ugly, wrinkly kid or two.” Something clicks as her voice breaks. “Fuck Poe. Fuck Poe and fuck Finn and fuck me for ever thinking I needed a man to accomplish anything in this life. Do I look like I need a man?”

Another wild gesture to her dress, becoming more and more transparent by the minute.

“Who’s Finn?” the same woman pipes up.

Rey glances down at her, and then smirks wryly. “Finn, Poe’s pet shark. He’s really got it out for me.”

That earns another smattering of laughter.

“Look, it’s just--can you _believe_ Poe would leave me for someone without a pair of _these_?” The crowd silences a little. “Well, wait, I had a lot of wine, so let me just--” She covers up her stomach with an arm. “And I guess my face is pretty puffy, I only just managed to stop sobbing into my wine--” And her face disappears behind her purse in an effort to accentuate her modest chest. Then--“Euch, of course I can--not like they’re much different from a shark’s chest, anyway. Though I think they’re pretty nice; _especially_ in pink.”

She rolls her head back and wrinkles her nose for everyone to see.

The sleeves of Rey’s dress are sticky, tacking to her skin, but she wrestles her way out of them nonetheless to reveal her corset completely.

“Especially _out_ of pink, too, no? Every prick’s dream, shark or not?”

And she drops the fabric. She feels her modest breasts bounce as they follow gravity’s whims. Her nipples tighten in the cool air. She could not feel less conscious of the entire situation, until a whoop brings her back to reality.

Rey Sanders registers three things in the next five seconds: the first, the leering cheers of the men in the crowd, which flushes her face and sobers her up enough to notice the next few details. The second, a pair of police officers, rushing the stage, she presumes to arrest her. And the third, the lively eyes of Rose Tico, the manager of the club Rey is gracing, which make contact with Rey’s in an encouraging sort of way. Rose nods twice at her, and even smiles slightly, a rare sight that in Rey’s three years of attending comedy nights with Poe she has never seen before. It brings her a warming sense of comfort, Rose’s smile.

Even as the cops grab her arms and cover her tits for her, Rey gets the sense that everything will be okay. Even as they put her in the back of their squad car, hard seats digging into her ass right where the bones of her corset are. Even when she is greeted, to her surprise, to the piercing sight of stand-up comedy genius Kylo Ren, sitting next to her with his hands cuffed behind his back.

***

Her head is swimming as she sits on the bench of a nondescript jail cell. It mostly just looks like the movies. She imagines, briefly, that she is in a western film, and that she was captured after robbing a bank, and the cops caught up to her, which was no matter, of course, because she is Rey Sanders, and there has never been a jail cell she couldn’t escape.

She closes her eyes to squeeze back a tear.

It’s too bad reality is inescapable.

She comes to grips with it all slowly, the way one might wake from a coma; groggily, confusedly, with far too many accompanying adjectives to name.

The scene that replays its cruel imprint is her last memory of Poe, his scruffy face being wiped by his hand over and over again, as though trying to make his guilt or relief or whatever emotion he was feeling disappear.

There she is, in her knee length white gown, lace stopping at her knees, neckline just edging this side of adorable. And her hair, oh, her hair; what was once the loveliest set of curls to ever grace Coruscant City now hangs in her face as sad, wet locks, having been poured on in the thunderstorm outside the synagogue.

Poe had said her name with such passion, the same kind of passion he’d expressed in his bed three weeks earlier, as he broke to her the news:

_“It’s not you, Rey… you have to know that… it’s just, this isn’t who I am.”_

Those were the words he’d hounded, over and over again. It wasn’t who he was. Rey wasn’t who he needed.

_“I just think you deserve to know, Rey. I’ve been having an affair. With Finn. But it’s more than that. And I can’t… I can’t in good conscience allow us both, you and me, to pursue this relationship that won’t bring either of us… satisfaction.”_

Rey had been plenty satisfied, she thinks. Sure, she always ended up rubbing one out in the quiet of her bathroom after their trysts, but that was what all women did, wasn’t it?

He leaves the lobby, leaves her, over and over again, on a looping reel behind her closed lids.

When she finally opens them, she sees that she is being watched by the one and only Kylo Ren.

His lips quirk towards her. “Rough night?”

She stares at him for a long moment, regarding him with what she hopes is a neutral expression. “What gave it away? The wedding gown, corset, or the hair?”

“The shoes,” he says. “Or lack thereof.”

Rey follows his gaze down to her feet, which are bare aside from her thin stockings, stained black on the bottoms by the asphalt she’d walked on all night.

“I wonder where those went,” she muses.

Kylo pulls her attention back to him. “You got arrested at the Cantina, huh? Must’ve been some performance.”

“Guess you could say that.” Rey can feel a headache forming at the base of her skull. “You know, I’ve seen your shows a couple of times.”

Kylo looks unsurprised. “You and a thousand others.”

“You’re cocky.”

“Can’t be funny without a little arrogance, I suppose.”

Rey thinks back to her brief stint on stage. “I suppose,” she agrees with a shrug. “Aren’t men and women supposed to go to separate cells in these places?”

Kylo shrugs right back. “Are you assuming I’ve been to one of these places before?”

Rey raises her eyebrows and even grins a tiny bit. “I would never be so audacious.”

“I don’t even know what this place is.”

“Oh, no? This is my living room, how rude of me not to give you the full tour.”

He smiles, and it’s all crooked teeth and endearing gums, dimples forming on either side of his mouth. Rey must still be quite drunk, because she thinks it might be one of the best mouths she’s ever seen.“Some host you are, not even offering me water.”

Her rebuttal is interrupted by a sharp voice belonging to an officer. Both Rey and Kylo startle a little as he jangles keys around and opens up the cell.

“Come on, then, Sanders,” he says in a gruff voice, not sparing her a glance.

Rey jumps off the bench and her head swoops a little, but a little light headedness certainly wasn’t going to stop her from escaping the cell, even if she was having a conversation that managed to make her smile with a man who wasn’t Poe Dameron.

“See ya, Kylo,” she waves while the officer locks the door back up.

He holds his hand back up at her. “Hopefully see you around, Sanders.”

“Rey,” she says, and the cop rolls his eyes at her.

“Stop flirting in the jail, this isn’t a club.”

Rey glares at the officer, and then swirls back to give Kylo a final glance.

“See you, Rey.”

Officer Johnson, his nametag dons him, discharges Rey and hands her the pink coat she forgot she’d brought with her after her failed wedding. She slips it on to preserve some ounce of her modesty, even though it’s still damp, and she makes her way down the stairs, seeing a sight she certainly did not expect: Rose Tico, with crossed arms and that same, rare little grin on her face.

“What are you doing here?” Rey asks by way of greeting.

“Bailing you out, isn’t that obvious?” Rose’s voice is sarcastic and lilting and totally not what Rey is used to hearing from women.

Rey also clearly has no idea how jail works; she’s never been bailed out before, and has never bailed anyone out, either. She is grateful to Rose, certainly, but wonders what bailing her out entailed. If it’s money, Rey has no idea how she’ll pay Rose back.

“Thank you,” Rey says carefully. “But I don’t know how I can make it up to you.”

“There’s nothing to make up.”

“Hm.” There’s no way Rey believes her. “I’m a changed woman, you know.”

“I’m aware, I was at the Cantina when I watched you bring the house down along with your dress.”

“Yikes,” is all the response Rey can give without losing the rest of her dignity.

“You were pretty brilliant,” Rose says once they exit the station together, turning to face Rey completely, eye contact and all. “One of the best I’ve ever seen.”

“I…” Rey isn’t sure how to respond. She had just been… talking. Nothing special. Nothing new. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“I’m not a kind person,” Rose interrupts. “I’m an honest one. You’re the real deal. I think you need to keep going.”

“Keep… going?”

“I think you could make a career out of this. Two people have come into the Cantina that I’ve said that about, Rey. The first was Kylo Ren, and look at him now, performing for sold out crowds at the Naboo every week. The second is you. You can do it, show that dickwad Poe Dameron what he’s missing, drown that shark Finn in a pool of your success. I can help you. I want to help you.”

That headache is starting to throb and pound Rey’s forehead. There is no way, she thinks, absolutely no way that this life is sustainable, especially not for her. She has to get a job, because she needs to figure out a way to keep paying for her school without Poe’s support, and comedy certainly won’t pay for that kind of lifestyle, and anyway, she wasn’t that funny; half of her comedy stemmed from bringing attention to her tits, and those are only going to bring entertainment to the table for so long.

It’s an easy decision, looking Rose right in her eyes and saying, with a finality she’s not sure she has ever possessed before, “No.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her mission starts with a trip on the subway. It leads her six stops down, and another five blocks on foot, until she’s back where her night had trapped her. She steels herself with a breath, adjusts the collar on her coat, and clicks her heels through the entrance of the jail.
> 
> “Has Kylo Ren been bailed out, yet?” she asks the officer manning the front desk. He looks up from whatever he’d been writing.
> 
> “No.”
> 
> “I’d like to pay his bail, then.” Rey stands a little straighter and glances at his badge, adding a short, “Please, Officer Johnson.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my super talented little sister is starting to dabble in digital art, so she drew this for me and i think she got all of the talent in the family she's a queen
> 
> also i have twitter now pls come talk to me bc i don't know how it works really https://twitter.com/reylobaelo

The one great part about never falling asleep after drinking all night is not having to deal with an ensuing hangover.

Shoeless, veilless, and husbandless, Rey stands perfectly cognitive in front of her apartment as the sun dips above New York’s sprawling skyscrapers. She’s questioning whether this is her apartment anymore, at all; if Poe will be there, necking Finn on their turquoise couch, or feeding him grapes, or just plain fucking him out in the open. Did he change the locks already, no less than 18 hours after leaving her?

The key in her hand digs so firmly into her palm it draws blood, and that’s her cue to open the door up, sticky situation or not.

There’s something stale about the air in her home. It’s like the oxygen has been sitting there since they left it the previous morning, just waiting for some poor soul to breathe it in, full of dissipated cigarette smoke and heartbreak.

There’s her second coat in the hallway, hanging on the coat rack, her small collection of shoes all lined up untouched on the floor below it. And their Picasso print--Poe insisted that one day they’d be wealthy enough to own an _original_ \--is still up there on the wall, too.

Everything is as it should be, with one glaring omission, of course.

Though she certainly doesn’t expect that glaring omission to be glaringly present, on their sofa in the sitting room.

“Rey, thank God!” Poe practically shouts at her, standing up from the couch so quickly he nearly loses his balance.

He approaches her before she can even react, cradling her face with two rounded hands. Her makeup has only just stopped running, probably because it’s all disappeared from its intended locations. The mascara is the most particular evidence of her heartbreak, her cheeks the canvass of its black tracks. Stunned, Rey stands and stares, until she feels his fingers wipe away at the spots below her eyes.

“I--what are you doing here?” she manages to croak out. “I mean--of course, it’s your apartment, I didn’t mean to--it’s just--what, er, I just didn’t think--”

Poe hangs his head. What is normally a posh quiff of hair is now hanging sadly near his eyebrows. He certainly doesn’t look like someone who’s run off with his one true love, with his bloodshot eyes and crumpled tuxedo.

“God, Rey, you scared me half to death,” he interrupts. “Finn, too. We must have searched the entire city of Coruscant for you.”

“Finn?”

“Of course, Finn. He loves you as much as I do.”

Rey feels her bottom lip wobble a little. She wills herself to stop it, taking a deep breath before looking Poe straight in the eye.

“Not enough, apparently.”

He at least has the decency to look down in a sheepish bout of shame.

“Rey…” he says, with his deep voice and expressive tone and vibrating timbre. “Rey, love, I never intended for it to go this way.”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “Don’t you dare, Poe. It isn’t even… God, you know, I would never be… angry at you for--for being with another man. Eight years I’ve known you. Five since we’ve been together, Poe, and you couldn’t have found a single opportunity, in all of those days, to bring this up? How about two years ago, when the affair started? A year ago, when you introduced Finn to me? The day before our wedding, the minutes before you left our apartment to spend the night with him while telling me you got a hotel room for yourself for tradition’s sake?”

Poe regards her with this awful mix of pity and sorrow. “I know. I’m sorry. You… you stay in the apartment as long as you need. I’ll find another place. I can’t leave you high and dry completely. I won’t come unless you ask. I’ll even stop going to the Cantina--”

“I’m not attending the Cantina anymore.”

“Rey, you have to attend the Cantina.”

“Comedy is your dream, not mine.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

Rey bites her lip, narrows her eyes. Her heart is thudding in her chest. She’s still in her damp wedding gown, and her stockings have runs through them. She has nothing left of her dignity. And she wonders, as Poe reaches a hand out to rub her shoulder in a way he certainly has no right to anymore, if there could be a sadder, funnier situation for someone to be in, somewhere in the world.

She reckons there probably isn’t.

So she nods once, twice, three times, and looks down at her bare, filthy feet. Because maybe Rose had been onto something earlier. And maybe Poe is onto something now.

“I… have to go,” she says, taking a slow step back.

“Rey, we need to talk about this.”

“I can’t right now. I have somewhere to be.”

Poe scoffs. “Where could you possibly need to be right now? We _need_ to figure this out, Rey, we need to figure _us_ out!”

Rey is slipping on a pair of shoes with Poe rounding up behind her, and she grabs the first purse she has off the coat rack, opening it quickly to sift through its contents. She knows it’s been quiet for too long, that Poe will pipe up again soon, but she only responds when she sees a small wad of bills at the bottom of the bag.

“There is no _us_ to figure out, Poe. You made sure of that. We can talk later. When I’m ready.”

The door slams shut behind her force.

Outside of the apartment, Coruscant City feels exactly the same. The buses are still moving and the mailman is still delivering and the bodega man is still manning his cash register. The air is a little chilly and the streets are drying from the night’s rain. The earth is still spinning. Rey is single and still in her wedding dress with matching matted hair.

The only difference is now it’s daylight, and she could not feel less self conscious, even with the bustle of the city showing no signs of slowing down.

Her mission starts with a trip on the subway. It leads her six stops down, and another five blocks on foot, until she’s back where her night had trapped her. She steels herself with a breath, adjusts the collar on her coat, and clicks her heels through the entrance of the jail.

“Has Kylo Ren been bailed out, yet?” she asks the officer manning the front desk. He looks up from whatever he’d been writing.

“No.”

“I’d like to pay his bail, then.” Rey stands a little straighter and glances at his badge, adding a short, “Please, Officer Johnson.”

Officer Johnson rolls his eyes and hands her a form. After signing it and handing over her wad of bills, she takes a seat by the stairs and waits.

Kylo Ren clatters down fifteen minutes later, his long legs aiding in a cartoonishly large stride. He’s going through his wallet, pursing his lips when something is evidently missing from one of the pockets. He looks back toward the front desk and shakes his head at Officer Johnson, who snorts a little and gives a small wave.

“Well, Sanders, it _is_ you,” Kylo says when he rounds past the desk to stand in front of her. “Officer Johnson here copped two of my most prized joints--” He raises his hand in a mock toast and then--“Hope you enjoy them!”

“We will!” Officer Johnson calls back.

Kylo looks at Rey fully. He cocks his head a little, stares into her with all of his attention. He takes in her ruined hair, and the frilly dress, covered in her pink coat. There’s something almost welcomingly dirty about the way he’s dragging his gaze over her appearance; Rey’s not sure if it’s the muddy color of his irises, or the pink of his tongue darting out to lick his lips, or the disheveled suit that’s doing it for her, but whatever it is… it’s certainly working.

“So you got some shoes,” he says when he finally reaches her feet.

“Found them in the street just outside, actually!”

“Bet you got a great price for them.”

“A bargain, like finding something on the sale rack at Saks.”

He smiles. “Didn’t know Saks had a sale rack.”

Rey bites her tongue and holds out a foot. “Oh, it’s just the dump behind the store. They throw out all of their reject clothes, you know, can’t be giving them to the poor or anything.”

“And what brought you back to this decrepit place, when you could be scavenging the Saks dumpster?” Kylo wonders through a laugh.

Rey stands up, drapes her purse on her wrist. “You owe me a coffee.”

“Do I?”

“Consider it even for the bail money I fronted.”

She takes a couple of steps towards the door, stopping when she realizes he isn’t following, but instead smirking towards her, head and shoulders angled down slightly. He pouts his lips a little, clearly considering something, and makes up his mind when he looks back up and shadows her outside.

“So what coffee shop are you dragging me to?” Kylo asks as he walks by her side.

“We’re paying a visit to the Cantina.” Kylo glances at her, confused. “There’s someone there I need to speak to.”

“You do know people don’t go to the Cantina for coffee, right?” Rey glares at him, and he holds his hands up in defeat. “Ah, you do. Well, what an adventure this is. I’ve never seen the Cantina in the day. I bet you can see all of the salacious substances covering the walls in the sunlight.”

“You can go ahead and inspect while I enjoy my classy cup of coffee,” she says with a smile.

“I don’t think I’ve been to the Cantina in years.”

“I can assure you, its customers have only gotten better.”

“And what about the performers?”

Rey’s not sure what to say to that. It makes her think of Wednesday nights with Poe, sat at a table, spiked coffees in their hands and grins on their faces; reminds her of Poe’s go-to set, a rendition of their era’s classic Jizz music, complete with a particularly mature gesture of, well… literal jizzing with the microphone.

The memory only fuels her desire to get to the Cantina as fast as possible, and she’s at a near jog, surpassing Kylo’s steps easily by the time they reach it. He holds the door open for her and bows as she waltzes in, ever the sardonic gentleman, and their footsteps echo loudly enough in the near-empty space to catch the immediate attention of Rose behind the bar.

“Can we get two coffees?” Kylo asks, walking up and resting his arms on the countertop.

Rose opens her mouth, and closes it, and opens it again, eyes flicking between Kylo and Rey for several moments. She holds Rey’s eyes for a long second.

“Phasma, we need two coffees!”

A tall blonde woman crashes from a backroom. “We aren’t even open, Rose--” Phasma comes to a dead halt when she sees the trio. “You--you’re Kylo Ren.”

Kylo’s eyebrows raise, and his lips quirk. “I wouldn’t know.”

“But--Rose--what is he… doing here?”

“I owe this woman,” he gestures to Rey, “a coffee, and she insisted on coming here. Says you guys have the best cups. And performers, but the jury’s still out on that.”

Phasma shakes her head, takes a step back, wipes her hands on her pants. She comes to her senses when Rose snaps her fingers a few times, and she hurries to pour two cups, sliding them across the bar to reach Kylo’s hands.

“Thanks, Phasma,” he says, and she looks like she might faint. “I’ll take these over there. And you go ahead and have your conversation.” He nods his head to the three of them, one for each, and balances the cups to a table across the room, where he folds a leg over the other in a chair far too small to accommodate his frame.

Rose turns her attention away from Kylo, facing Rey. “You brought Kylo Ren here? After totally blowing me off last night?”

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing to come out of Rey’s mouth. “Yesterday was… not a good one for me. My fiance left me. I was drunk out of my mind, soaking wet from the rain, mourning something without being ready to mourn it. But… but you were right last night. I’ve been coming here for years. Every Wednesday. And Poe, he was… well, he was just--”

“A talentless loser, doing cheap gags?”

“Well… maybe not totally talentless, but… essentially, I suppose… But the point is, I’m sorry for the way I acted last night. And I want it. I want to try it. If you think I can do, and I was as… decent as I think I was tonight. I want to. Go for it. With you.”

Rose blinks at her. Rey can tell she’s biting her cheek, biding her time. Then slowly, she says, “Not with Kylo Ren over there?”

Rey looks back at him. He’s still in the chair, sipping his coffee. When he sees her looking, he raises his cup up and grins.

With a tilted head, Rey decides all at once. “He’s here for other reasons. So definitely not. Just with you.”


End file.
